Posted by Cam W. on April 2, 2001, at 6:38:15
> > "Experience is knowledge"? Did you really think about this statement before typing it and how wrong it really is? Blind faith in one's experiential beliefs is dangerous.
>
> I appreciate what you're trying to do, but please keep your cool, especially when things get heated. Experience is in fact one form of knowledge, and "blind" has negative connotations.
>Dr.B - I stand by what I say in it's contextual meaning. I was going to let this slide, but I feel what is being talked about in this thread is far too important not to justify.
When saying that "experience is knowledge", I assumed that, judging from the thread, we were discussing "scientific knowledge" on a level beyond placing one's hand on a hot oven element and not doing it again.
When I was referring to experience not being knowledge, I was using this in the context of true science, as we can empirically know it, outside of our 5 senses. Francis Bacon (1561-1626) may not have been the first to follow this line of reasoning, but in a part of his "Distributio Operis" (in the preface to the "Magna Instauratio") which relates to his "Novum Organum" he says, "Now that we have coasted past the Ancient Arts, we will prepare the human Intellect for its passage to new lands of discovery. And so this second Part has for its end Instruction as to a better and more perfect use of Reason in discovery of things, and the true aids of the Intellect: so that (as far as the frail condition of humanity allows) the intellect may be raised by it, and enabled to scale the steep and dark ascents of Nature. This Art (which we term the 'Interpretation of Nature') is in kind Logical; although between it and ordinary Logic there is a vast, immeasurable difference. For the latter does indeed also profess to elaborate and provide help and guards for the Intellect; and so far only we agree. But ours differs from it chiefly in three ways: viz. (1) in its end; (2) in the order of its demonstrations; and (3) in the starting point of its inquiries."
Bacon does go into detail on each of these 3 points, but suffice it to say, he says that we cannot truly know through experience, but need to test that experience to gain true knowledge. This can be seen in "Novum Organon" when Bacon says, "The cause and root of almost all evils in the Sciences is this one; that while we falsely admire and exalt the powers of the human mind, we do not seek its true aids."
"The subtilty of Nature far surpasses the subtilty of sense and intellect; so that men's fair meditations, speculations and reasonings are a kind of insanity, only there is no one standing by to notice it."Further to this Rene Descartes' "Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences" (1637) said, "I remarked, moreover, with respect to experiments, that they become always more necessary the more one is advanced in knowledge; for, at the commencement, it is better to make use only of what is spontaneously presented to our senses, and of which we cannot remain ignorant, provided we bestow on it any reflection, however slight, than to concern ourselves about more uncommon and recondrite phenomena: the reason of which is, that the more uncommon often only mislead us so long as the causes of the more more ordinary are still unknown; and the circumstances upon which they depend are almost always so special and minute as to be highly difficult to detect."
Descartes goes on from here to describe, in a slightly different way from Bacon, the methodology of scientific method and how it differs from experiential knowledge.
Sorry if I didn't fully describe what I meant by "experiential knowledge" and I hope now you can see why I so tersely rejected Fish's stance. If everyone follows their experiences as "the Truth" science shall never advance and we shall be thrown into another Dark Ages. The scientific method, although not perfect, is the best method we have for eliciting "the Truth".
"Blind faith" follows from the above, in that believing in something, just because you want to believe in it, can cause problems when trying to discover or interpret "the Truth". Therefore, the word "blind", as used in my original sentence, should not be construed as having negative connotations, but as having descriptive value. "Blind faith" was chosen by myself to show those with less of a scientific background how our experiences can mislead us to false conclusions and thus be mistaken as knowledge (in the true, scientific sense of the word).
I hope that this clears things up a bit. Actually for once I wasn't getting "heated", but used the exclamation points as descriptors. Sorry, it is hard to show emotion through the written word, especially when one isn't a Faubert or Shakespeare. I may be Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, but I like to think of myself as the plodding, ignorant Sancho Panza, pointing out "the Truth" when it stares me in the face.
Sincerely - Cam
poster:Cam W.
thread:966
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20010315/msgs/966.html